


Marietta

by Avbi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Disturbing Themes, F/F, Gen, Implied blood, Italian Folklore - Freeform, Mild Gore, Sad, sadly the rating is not due to fun stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24079558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avbi/pseuds/Avbi
Summary: In Medieval Italy life can be hard, but fairytales are made to help desperate people.This is a story about a forest, a marsh, old tales and new ones.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Marietta

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful loves, Flamma and Y, and to my friend for tolerating my questions and patiently reading and re-reading this piece. Without them this mess would be even MORE of a mess. All errors are mine, not theirs, I claim and own them.  
> English is not my first language so, please, feel free to make me notice mistakes or syntactic horrors that I might have produced. Any offer of criticism is more than welcome, I would love to know how I can make my writing better in your opinion. 
> 
> More notes at the end

******

Moonlight falls in patches of curdled milk and the wind bites cold on the trails on her cheeks.  
“Sant’Antuono de veluto fame truvà..”  
A whisper freezes fast in the night air while, at the foot of the tree, the briers rustle. Marietta hugs her legs tighter under the wool of her cape, hiding her head between her arms, trying to breathe heat into her skirts.  
Her right foot slides. A piece of bark breaks off hitting the tree trunk twice before reaching the ground.  
Below her a yip and the horribly familiar sound of four paws on the earth, dancing nearer. Then a dissatisfied growl, shrill and desperate.  
Biting her lips against a sob Marietta knows it is unfair this is happening to her.  
Unlike the blacksmith, she never cursed the Virgin.  
Unlike Cristina, she never drowned a babe before its eyes were open because a man broke a promise.  
She is better than them, she confessed and prayed, she was never refused the bread in church, she… 

A shiver racks her body as another gust of wind shakes the oak and a bird whistles in the dark. The leaves rustle in hushed whispers that seem to call her name in Anna’s voice.  
Her grandmother’s warnings about the capricious ladies of the marshes come into her mind, along with the words the ancient heathens used to call them, before they knew the Lord and the Saints. Words of a prayer you should never speak at night when the devils frolic, hidden from the eyes of God.  
Marietta hears nails scraping at the the tree and presses her hands to her mouth, swallowing back a shout, silently begging Saint Anthony through clenched teeth. 

******

Dawn is still grey when the mother trots away, her dull fur stretched over sharp ribs and her pink tongue lolling from her mouth. She is alone in the hunt, her only living pup too young to help taking down a deer, so she keeps stalking this lonely prey, waiting, hungering. 

******

Berta sits before the fireplace, eyes as empty and barren as the fields that surround their house. By her side her husband shivers despite the smoky blaze on their faces. “We had to…watching it…” She doesn’t speak, offering nothing but a weary nod, knowing that he is right and yet there are stains not even the harshest lye can wash away. Something they will never confess to, not even to the priest. Her husband takes his face in his large, ruined palms and sobs while the wood crackles and snaps. 

******

Marietta tries to walk through the pain in her joints, following the small stream downward in hope of a house, a hamlet, anything. At every patch of shade the sweat congealed on her skin makes her shiver, while the rough wool of her clothes burns under the sun. A litany of sounds, words whose meaning even her grandmother had forgotten, leaves her lips, begging like in Church, but to the Maiden of the muddy waters in one breath and the Saints on the other.  
The oaks rustle and the underbrush grabs at her with claws of twig and leaves, sticky with rain and nettle.  
The only bounty Spring offers is a nest with fledglings too young to fly.  
Their small bodies throb with each of their cries in her hand, screaming for a help that cannot come.  
Marietta snaps their necks between her fingers, closing her eyes against a burst of tears when her teeth sink in what little flesh the young birds have. It tastes like iron and is barely enough to quell the nausea that followed hunger a long time ago. Yet her rabbit snare was lost as she fled whatever is following her and she dares not rest and light a fire. Wolves might fear it, but demons do not.  
As she sucks on the tender bones Marietta allows herself to cry. Why her? It was hunger that led her family, her, so far into the woods, not the sin of gluttony; then she was too far, alone, and the forest turned its many eyes on her. Crouching by the slow and muddy stream she takes off one of her gowns, filling it with water and drinking what filters down from the wool.  
For a while she had hoped.  
She hoped not to have lost her way as she slid down ravines hidden by the bushes, the skin in her hands breaking open as she tried to hold onto branches.  
She hoped against hope that the wolf's bark could be a dog’s and the chatter of a fox could be the rude voice of bandits camping, hungry enough to be ready to suffer their touch, to trade life for sin, if it meant being given food and respite from the darkness following her.  
Those hopes died one after the other, like the hope of hearing her family answer her cries when she lost the way.  
By evening the earth has turned to mud under her shoes, a dark grime that threatens to suck her feet in. The clearing she found only reveals more trees beyond its swamp and she almost lets herself fall to the ground, defeated, before searching for an oak to spend the night in, trembling in exhaustion.  
Her eyes close quickly the moment she is settled in the highest fork she can reach. 

******

Dusk falls and the mother is hunting again, following the scent of death and desperation. Her steps hesitate when her nose warns her of the treacherous marsh before her, but hunger is stronger, always. 

******

The moon is full, glaring down on the marsh like an evil eye. Closed water lilies stand on rotting stems, jutting like shards of metal, their sweet smell lingering like fog on the still waters.  
Marietta shivers burning and freezing in the confines of her clothes, her eyes running on silvered grass, stil this night nothing but the irregular hop of a frog waits for her under the foot of the oak.  
There is enough light that she could almost walk, even though she knows better. Prayers, old and new, escape her lips in rushes of breath, fading in the air while the darkness waits: a crouched beast on the borders of moonlight. Her feet try to find purchase on the bark, slipping with congealed mud.  
Her nails dig in the flesh of her palms, shocks of tingling pain, every time fainter, to feel alive. There are no Saints that appear to lead her to a house, the silence of night barely broken by the sound of waters seeping, running deep under the earth in rivers that, the old folks claim, wash away your memories.

The Lady appears as sudden and silent as a lighting without thunder drawing the borders of sleep and fear.  
At first she is but a ripple in the reflection of the moon where the water is deeper and Marietta shivers, holding her knees tight enough for her knuckles to blanch as she watches. The figure emerges slowly, veiled in a buzz of shimmering mosquito wings.  
Marietta feels her breath break in her throat as a dark head, the head of a woman, surfaces from the water, trailed by long, flowing, hair.  
Moonlight shines in eyes as grey and bright as dawn, fixed on her.  
From the wood a growl turns into a yip before trailing into silence, but Marietta barely hears it.  
The Lady of the marsh emerges slowly, beautiful like the Virgin in her painting on the altar and naked as an old goddess. In her wake lilies open as water flows down from the gentle curve of her shoulders. Without thinking Marietta scrambles gracelessly down her tree. Her knees, too weak to hold her upright, bend from under her as soon as the touches ground, yet she crawls ahead, barely able to hold herself on trembling arms, her eyes fixed on the woman before her.  
The Lady walks unwary, with the steps of a queen in her own kingdom, a gentle smile on her lips. Still the sounds Marietta hears are of paws circling, dancing, waiting. The Lady’s small breasts are wild apples, the sour ones that crack under your teeth, and Marietta should see the Devil in her lack of modesty, blush like she does with fever, yet she can only think of how they would feel under her lips. Her heartbeats drowns every other sound as the Lady of the marshes comes closer and closer, bathed in shy moonlight.  
The wounds on Marietta’s palms burn painlessly against the mud now as she tries to drag herself forward. The Lady smiles gently, her teeth white, rounded, creek pebbles shining in the moonlight. She is more beautiful than Anna, the miller’s young wife who, once, let Marietta touch her thighs while they were washing their bloody rags.  
The Lady comes close enough to touch her, her steps noiseless. She is so near that Marietta can see a ring of green and brown around the grey in her eyes. Her smile never falters, gleaming, too old for words, even forgotten ones.  
A hand, delicate as a lily and dark as the night, rises slowly from her figure while a coo of hollow rushes fills the clearing.  
Marietta extends her own arm, trembling as if she was raising two jugs filled with water. Her sight wanes with the effort, but when her skin meets the the Lady’s she finds it warm, soft: moss under the sun.  
Thin fingers close gently around her arm in answer and Marietta chokes, tears spilling down her cheeks. It’s like knives parting her flesh, scraping down to the bone. A sudden pain that tears a vixen cry from her throat. Yet there is nothing but gentleness in the eyes that look into hers and a sudden burning warmth slides down her body, calming her shivers. The lips of the Lady part in a calm buzz, like the one around old must, drowning a distant, wet, crack of bones.  
Kneeling in the mud Marietta feels the heat of the Lady’s second arm surrounding her waist, holding her close while the viscous warmth seeps down, soaking the wool of her clothes.  
A possessive touch, one that doesn’t hide how much she is needed: like she never was. Marietta’s lips open in a sob and the Lady pushes closer, cradling her against a body of moss and bark, her lips near enough to let her sweetish breath caress Marietta’s cheeks.  
Her hair spreads like dark wings in the night, braided with faded orange blossoms.  
When their mouths meet the Lady tastes like wild honey and her tongue is a silver coin slipped between Marietta’s lips, a gift for her voyage, where the ghosts of lost souls won’t be able to steal it. 

******

Dawn comes dancing on birdsongs, kissing colours on the forest while its fingers of light caress the leaves. A stag watches the trees with weary eyes before bending his neck to drink. In the undergrowth the mother trots away, back to higher grounds, her pup following her steps with the energy of sated hunger.

******

It is years afterward when Berta, before the same fireplace, caresses her children’s faces and tells them of the Lady of the marshes: older than the stone arches crossing the countryside and capricious like the winds. Of how she steals the milk from mothers’ breasts with her evil eye, but can protect virtuous lost maidens, welcoming them in her court, stealing them from danger and unworthy families.  
Because truth is for words shackled in books, like the ones the priest keeps. Her words are the ones of the poor that float in the air: fee to become dreams and nightmares, free to be forgotten and changed, free to soothe regrets never confessed, moulding them in a fairytale where everyone is forgiven.  
Even those who had no choice.  
Even those who cannot forgive themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> The first, and only, line Marietta speaks is a very free interpretation of the Italian prayer/rhyme "Sant'Antonio di velluto, fammi trovare ciò che ho perduto." It is an invocation to St. Anthony the great who, in Italian folklore, helps you find lost things; it means "Saint Anthony of velvet, let me find what I have lost". 
> 
> The figure of the Lady of the marsh is based on the survival of local pagan myths and worship (the nymphs and even the roman Diana) in the rural folklore of Italy (in this instance the Latium region). The very term 'pagan' comes from the Latin "pagus" (rural village). I tried to set the story during the high Middle Ages.  
> Marshes in Latium were also responsible for malaria, it was endemic. 
> 
> Traditional Italian womenswear included the layering of several gowns one over the other.
> 
> The Italian wolf, Canis Lupus Italicus, is a sub-specie of the grey wolf. It is much smaller than the average grey wolf and even shyer. They live in families, this wolf is a very unlucky one that has lost her pack thus her unusual prey of choice. Normally they are scared of people.
> 
> Traditionally Italian brides braided orange blossoms in their hair, fresh ones though. 
> 
> Ancient roman tradition wanted a silver coin to be placed hidden in the mouth of the the deceased to allow them to pay for Charon's services. Without the coin your spirit could not move on. 
> 
> As usual: all characters' opinions are their own, not necessarily mine.


End file.
